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Roma women and youth first-time voters – self-worth that is making a difference in Albania

20 September 2017

An Albanian woman prepares to cast her vote at the polling station, north of Tirana

(REUTERS/Oleg Popov)

When Aurora Koci, a young Albanian Roma activist, looks back at the voter education project she recently completed, she can’t help but feel proud of what has been accomplished: 22 different events nationwide, 760 participants -- and most importantly -- a measurable increase in participation of Roma voters in Albania’s recent parliamentary elections.

All that appeared to be a tall order when Koci, the project’s co-ordinator, started working with a small group of other Roma activists on the project the OSCE Presence in Albania implemented in co-operation with their organization, the Institute of Romani Culture in Albania (IRCA). It ended up being the largest voter education project ever implemented in Albania specifically targeting Roma women and youths – a group that in terms of empowerment stands in the margins of an already marginalized community.

First-time voters

Many of these people had never voted in their lives, so the trainers had to start from the basics: their activities ranged from awareness-raising and mock voting sessions to meetings teaching prospective voters how to evaluate candidates and how to ask important questions during the election campaign. Activists even made it easier for Roma voters to find their polling stations and helped register them if needed.

"It was about understanding the importance of one's vote. It was about self-worth," Koci says.

While vote-buying and family voting have been identified by observers as a concern for all Albanian voters, they are even more of a problem in Roma communities, activists say.

Rivald Korra, another IRCA activist, was one of the trainers in Albania’s second largest city, Durres. He says the hardest part was gaining the trust of a community that is sceptical of anything related to politics due to repeated disappointments and marginalization.

Trainers teaching voters how to evaluate candidates and how to ask important questions during the election campaign.

“We worked with people that came from the community, and who had access to the community members,” Korra says. “It was important to train people how to participate in the democratic process, while remaining completely apolitical ourselves.”

He adds that the Roma community is often targeted by political intermediaries looking to buy votes.

“Sometimes it’s cash, sometimes it's the promise of a lowly municipal job,” Korra says, adding the key was to convince participants in the project’s training sessions that their vote was more powerful when it was given to candidates they actually believed would be better at governance rather than being cast simply in exchange for a small amount of cash.

Assistance to voters living in the margins of society

Erjola Likaj, National Election Legal Officer in the Democratization Department of OSCE’s Presence in Albania, says the project targeted the Roma community in particular because it is affected by serious issues typical for voters living in the margins of society.

IRCA activists training people from Roma communities how to participate in the democratic process.

“We are aware of the many problems concerning the Roma community during elections in Albania. Roma women are particularly disadvantaged, given that a considerable number of them are illiterate. We want Roma women and youth to fully understand and enjoy their right to vote,” Likaj says. “Through this project, we reached them where they are, empowering them with knowledge about how important their vote is and how they can cast it in an effective way.”

The project, the largest of its kind ever held in Albania, had the country’s Central Election Commission as a partner and was financially supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

For Koci, in addition to bringing tangible benefits for the recent voting process, the project has also left a long-term legacy, through training people in basic democratic principles and supporting a civil society organization that comes from the Roma community itself.

“This was also about training people in how to hold their political representatives accountable, and that’s going to stay with them,” Koci says.